Saturn's Rings

Here is a picture of Saturn taken from the Cassini spacecraft orbiting around saturn.  The rings are very thin in proportion to the planet itself, as demonstrated by this edge-on photo, and are only about 200 meters thick.  It was first believed by Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens that the rings were solid, but later theorized correctly by astronomer Jean Chapelain that the rings were made up of smaller chunks of ice, dust, and rocks.  Physicist James Maxwell later confirmed Chapelain's theory by proving that the solid rings would be pulled into the planet by gravity.